I want to create a 6 panel digipak, on the inside of the digipak, i want an image to go across the the centre and left panel, with the two artists standing in one corner with a eye grabbing backdrop behind them taking over most of the two panels.
Skywriting
Front cover will include mid shot of Sifa and her leaning on a street name sign, that I will be giving the name of the song below the image the name of the artist will be placed and we will get a clear view of iconic image of London at the background. The back cover will include many different images of the artists in different type of shots with different use of coloured backgrounds, image sizes will be small so that roughly 30 - 40 different images will be included. The left side of the inside cover will include the list of the other songs within the album on the continues view of London. The CD will be plain white background with the name of the artist, (Sifa) in red. The colour code for this product will be black/white with use of red. With the design idea I am aiming to appeal to the target audience which this is the main reason that I am not going for a very complicated style of design and making sure that style of the genre is clear within the product for it appeal to the target audience.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video both uses and challenges forms and conventions of the RnB genre. One of the most obvious and most typical conventions of RnB is the way women are portrayed, whether they are the main artist, backup dancer, backup singer etc. They all come across as being the same. In the RnB genre the chances of making a video with no site of a female in it, are close to none. This genre is well known for its close up, slow motion shots focusing on the female body or even certain body parts.
As you can see, this video has a numerous amount of shots focusing on females. The clothing used in the video brings out a sexual meaning in the way the ladies should be viewed. There are some slow motion tracking and panning shots which focus only on certain parts of the female body, we have used this idea and concept but in doing so have left out the lack of clothing theme and obviously are main atrist
One of the main ways in which it uses typical elements of a Funky House music video is through the use ofcamera shots and movement, editing, lighting, colour and costume. Through our research, we found that many Funky House music videos used various camera shots and fast pace editing to cut with the beat of the music. We liked this as the Funky House genre is particularly known for its beat and clubbing/dancing feel, so we felt that it was important to emphasize this by cutting on the beat. A music video that wewere influenced by was Donaeo – Party Hard as the chorus (which is the most prominent part of the song) has lots of camera movement and fast pace editing which helps to create a ‘funky’ atmosphere.
Here you see how the "American Boy' video has influenced us into using certain shots similar to ones seen in it. A medium shot of Estelles body figure is captured with a contrasting background which really exaggerates her body and causes her to stand out. In our video we have a shot of Stephanie Jackson focusing on her body and again similar to the "American Boy" video using a contrasting background which powerfully causes the artist to draw maximum attention from viewers. This also brings out a sex appeal factor to the artists aura, revealing her sexiness to viewers, appealing mostly to the male audience and a role model figure to the females.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video both uses and challenges forms and conventions of the RnB genre. One of the most obvious and most typical conventions of RnB is the way women are portrayed, whether they are the main artist, backup dancer, backup singer etc. They all come across as being the same. In the RnB genre the chances of making a video with no site of a female in it, are close to none. This genre is well known for its close up, slow motion shots focusing on the female body or even certain body parts. Also the male artist and female are represented very differently in our video, the lead female singer is filmed and shot as being something attractive to look at, focused on by showing the camera a strong feminine side and parts of the body which strongly come across as being sexual. The male rapper is dressed very differently in not so bright coloured clothes which cover up large amounts of the body. In regards to the performance, he dominates the screen and comes across clear with his lyrics through body language and hand jesters which puts most of the focus on him. These are ways in which males and females are clearly shown differently in the same video regardless of their importance in in the video.
As you can see, this video has a numerous amount of shots focusing on females. The clothing used in the video brings out a sexual meaning in the way the ladies should be viewed. There are some slow motion tracking and panning shots which focus only on certain parts of the female body, we have used this idea and concept but in doing so have left out the lack of clothing theme and obviously are main artist is a female so our video differs in many ways in comparison to this one by Dizzee Rascal.
Typical of a male performer in RnB and also in Rap and Hip Hop genres, a must do is to give a good performance for the camera and audience. The screen shot of Ludacris shows a great example of this, he is clearly performing strongly in front of the camera, using hand jesters as he does so again typical from the genre. Showing him placed in front of the others who re located in the background but still visible, is saying not to forget about them but at the current moment in time all the attention should be on me. Now looking at a screen shot from our video, it is clear to see how the "All I Do Is Win" video influenced us to keep to and interpretate the styles conventions of our genre. Again the male performer is at the front (when it's his time in the song) again using his hands to maximize his performance and the attention giving to and trying to be attained from him.
Here you see how the "American Boy' video has influenced us into using certain shots similar to ones seen in it. A medium shot of Estelles' body figure is captured with a contrasting background which really exaggerates her body and causes her to stand out. In our video we have a shot of Stephanie Jackson focusing on her body and again similar to the "American Boy" video using a contrasting background which powerfully causes the artist to draw maximum attention from viewers. This also brings out a sex appeal factor to the artists aura, revealing her sexiness to viewers, appealing mostly to the male audience and a role model figure to the females.
Another feature typical from our genre is the quick editing and camera shots. Our video focuses on using close ups and medium mid shots, long shots are used rarely and only to introduce a new setting. Looking at other videos of the same genre you will see this is a common trend used through out music. Another factor is the quick cuts used from shot to shot, this is most strongly shown when our Male artist performance takes place. The quick cuts of the artist from the different locations worked very well for the overall video, and the 'in time with the beat' cuts allow the video to follow the conventions of its genre.
How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipaks and advertisement)?
I have purposely mad my ancillary products to resemble the video and clearly show the link between the two.
Firstly, the image used as the main picture for the the front of the Digipak can instantly be related to the scene from the video where Stephanie Jackson was standing next to the glass window with the fantastic lighting.
This screen shot from the video shows how clearly the image can be related back to that scene in the video. This is a strong factor when it comes to relating to the audience. A good link between music video and ancillary products is needed for instant recognition, this is the strongest way to reach out and appeal to a wide audience.
There is also a strong visible link between the Digipak and Advertisement again allowing the audience to recognise the artist and become familiar with her and her work. I have used the same image from the cover of the digipak as the main image for my advertisement, using the same colour scheme as the digipak as well as the same patterns and shapes. A strong element i have used is keeping the font consistent through out my ancillary products, as you can see i have used the same font for the title of the album "Rumours" on the front cover of the digipak, the back cover and on the advertisement. Doing this adds to the effect of having the same image repeated, instant recognition that will get the artist and thier movements known.
Mary J Blige's album "The Breakthrough" has a simple image of her with an effect over it, and a distinctive font which states her name, album title and logo. This is plain and instantly recognisable especially due to the face on picture of her which is enlarged. On the poster advertisement of her album the same image has been used, with the same effect and same font stating the same as in the album cover. To make it differ from the album cover other pictures of her have been added overlapping each other, again keeping to the effect of the Digipak. The link between the two can be related to straight away and this will help to reach out to the widest audience available.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The actual making of our video consisted of us using state of the art equipment such as a JVC 15 ProHD camera with two 2GB memory cards, a Panasonic digital camera with a 1GB memory card, Sony Mini-speaker, Camera lighting equipment and JVC tripod. The same camera, digital camera and tripod were used last year by the group so we had no trouble with these pieces of equipment. The speaker and lighting though, were new to us but we were properly informed on how to get the best results from using them in an efficient way.
The construction stages, which included the making of the Digipak and Advertisement and the editing and putting together of our final video. Various different media technologies played parts in this stage such as Final Cut Pro which was used to make our music video. This was our second year using the program so we were familiar with it although we had to use features of the software and skills we had not used before so there was still a slight challenge. A new skill we had to learn and apply was lip syncing. When a clip is laid down on the time line along with the audio, the movement of the video will not be in sync with the audio. To make sure it is we had to pick out a part of the clip that stood out, so for example the artist singing the word "American", at the beginning of the word wherever that position is on the clip we mark it, go to the audio and find that same part of the song and mark the audio also. When the clip is dropped on top of the audio the two marked points are significantly easy to align, once this is done the audio from the video clip is muted and that whole section is played back and it should be in perfect lip sync.
For the production of my ancillary products i had trouble which package to use out of Photoshop and Quark Express. I initially started by using Quark express, by doing it this way i would firstly have to edit a picture/image in Photoshop before putting it onto the Digipak template on Quark. A problem I had with this was when the picture was put into Quark it wasn't the size of the panel and when I attempted to re size it the picture became stretched and pixelated. From this i thought to try Photoshop as it would be easier as the picture wouldn't have to be transported anywhere and there was also a template in Photoshop. In the end I used Photoshop to complete my Digipak and Advertisement, it was much easier plus Photoshop allowed me to use a lot more effects colours, shapes and images, and my end products were of a good quality.
The Internet was also an important tool that helped me to complete most of the tasks. Google most of all by providing me images i have used and also giving me good websites that have helped when I've run searches. Another big help from the Internet has been YouTube, i have used this countless times to look at videos, embed them into my blogs or even just leave the link but using YouTube strengthens the work by providing a visual to refer to which will explain things a lot better than a written explanation.
Blogger has been the most used and important piece of technology used through out the project, even up to now the evaluation is being done on blogger. Blogger has been used to document are progress and any rising matters that have come up whilst doing the project. There was also a checklist of blogs which had to be done, they were broken down into different types of blogs like, individual entries, group entries and entries that can be in the form of pictures, links, videos etc. all planning and research has been blogged on blogger showing evidence of the work. Blogger basically holds all the work which has been done including the final products, blogging tasks, extra tasks, and other matters which have arisen and is presented in a interesting and interactive way.What have you learned from your audience feedback?Audience Member 1: "I really liked the intro establishing shots, the choice of location was really good, and I thought the performance was well done."Audience Member 2: "The editing was sick! Especially the part when the male artist performs, the cuts were in time with the beat it worked really well, and switching between the different locations was smart, but there were problems with the lighting at some points in the video"
This screen shot from our video is an example of when an audience member commented on our poor lighting. The shot was well lit in the previous seconds and then dramatically changed to this, it didn't make the whole video disappointing but is a let down to the build up of the end of it. We only shot this scene once, so there was no second or back up clip we could use instead, because it was only a couple of seconds long we thought we could get away with it but all the veiwers acknowledged it and commented on it.From this we have learned not to risk filming at all if the lighting is poor, as it is too much of a risk, and also to film a sequence various times. That point is very important as it reduces the chances of the final video having a small part like ours where the lighting does it no justice whatsoever.
Our rough cut music video has allowed us to allocate techniques and improvements which will be need to done. There are many things that we need to change in terms of filming and editing from the feedback given by the teachers.
Feedback:
Shot and lighting works very well
Keeping the location same in each verse, we planned to film parts of a verse in different locations.
Some shots need to be completed
As a group, we need to improve on those terms and we have decided to film few shots again and get the rest of the video shots done. However using one location for each verse and chorus will be in the same location but different verse/chorus will lead to a different location.
Estelle Ft. Kanye West - American Boyis our agreed final song choice. Official American Boy Video We will use some features present in the original video and alter them into a concept of our own, like for example we are also having our video in black and white and some parts of it shot on a plain drop background. The artists in the video will be participants as well as narrators. So far we have come up a lot of ideas for editing which are not used in the official video which has inspired us from various UK and american artists' videos, also we plan to shoot at more than one location which is unlike the american boy video which is all on the same one back drop. In our video we would like to include a feature quite unique and unused some would say and that is free hand, free flow, camera movement. This is a camera art in its own right when pull of correctly so it therefore has its own standards, but it is a good style to use and doesn't require the best positioning and camera framing.
The video i have chosen to review is "Nas - The World Is Yours". The genre for this video is hip-hop, this is cleverly shown through choice of setting and background. The video includes urban backdrops like graffiti infested areas, train tracks, main streets, flats and other aspects typical to the hip-hop genre. The artists' choice of clothing also strongly relates to the genre, dark colours and hoodies bring out the seriousness of the genre. The video does not follow a narrative structure, it is based mainly around the singers performance and his surroundings. The central artists' position in the narrative is a narrator and throughout the video various participants help make the video fit together. The editing in the video is a mixture between fast paced cuts, close ups, tracking shots of backgrounds etc. A clever wide shot is used to shoot the train as it passes, this worked very well. Another great shot is a high angled wide shot of the artist in front of a graffiti wall, this was one of the videos best shots. The editing was in time with the beat of the song and the mixture of different features within the editing works very well for this genre.
Comparing the original video to the students version, similarities start can be spotted. Firstly the student has also chosen to edit the video in black and white, this simple effect can get the deeper meaning like the one in this song, across to the audience more meaningfully. The original, included a kind of bent screen effect, this obviously grabbed the eye of the student as they portrayed a similar effect in their version. This effect was a fish like view, as can be seen in the video, i personally preferred the students effect compared to the originals.
The choice of scenery/location is almost self choosing when listening to a
The main purpose of this moodboard was to understand the main aspects of our genre. We looked at many features such as clothes/outfit, target audience and instruments that is used within hip hop and r&b which has given us a brief understanding of what we need to be aware of whilst producing our music video.
As a group we came up with a list of possible song choices. We choice 5 different songs, however we were really determined to do American Boy by Estelle ft. Kanye West..
The lip sync tutorial was an interesting experience, the actual filming of the the video within the enclosed area of a classroom, showed us how difficult it can be at times along the filming process. It really made us consider how we should approach filming our final music video. The exercise also showed how not filming more footage than what's going to be included in the video can prove to be a vital blow once the editing stage begins, but from this mistake we will learn and better ourselves for the proper task.
